Butte semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1886-1890, 1887-12-21
ROT MARrYRs BUT FELoNs,

Captain Black, the Anarchists counsel
did himself no credit ON Sunday by his
funeral Grafton over tho dead Anarchists
bodies. Tho whole purport OF his speech
was that the men who expiated their crime
in i~nstigating and urging the Haymarket
massacre were engaged while on earth in
the same work Of love and good will to
man that the lowly Naxarens was while he
went among men nineteen centuries ago.
How utterly Captain Blacks sensibilities
must be bluntsd that no could stand before
An audience Of intelligent men and women
and make such q statement! Laying aside
all question of blasphemy, how can any
sane man read tho gospels in which the
teachings of Jesus are contained and find a
parallel between the author of the Sermon
on the Mount and the rabid utterances of
tho hanged msn1 The n is all the highest
type of nobility Of mind-forgiveness Of in
juries, turning away wrath with a soft
answer, the offering Of the other cheek
when tho one is slapped, f~orgiving
An injury until seventy times seven,
che that livsth by tho sword shall
perish by tho sword" allowing himselfto be
led to the supreme sacrifice without resist
apcs-in short, such an example Of dignifed
bearing under adversely, meekness, gentle
ness, accomplishing endurance as history
furnishes no parallel to, not even Prince
Brahna, though he abased himself and
wrought a great work by his lowly example.
The others were-dynamiters. They pro-
feosed to see injustice among existing condi-
tions Of society, and they proposed to
remedy it with the most terrible agency OF
misery and physical suffering to those who
opposed them known to man. The doctrine
OF the one is to win man from his savage
by gsntlensss; the Others would make
q desert and call it peace.
To the majority of his hearers, Captain
Black was preaching a strange doctrine.
His reference to the central figure of Chris
tianity introduced to their attention a per-
sonage to whom it is safe to say the major
ity are strangers. His teachings, his ways.
the ends to which his mission on earth were
devoted are fouted by them. just as his
ministers would be treated with ridicule
were they to offer to expound his teachings.
But the offence to decency of which Captain
Black was guilty in the eyes Of all men is
the endeavor to place the deceased felons
before their sy~mpathizers as martyrs in the
cause OF universal brotherhood, and his
persistent effort to ignore what the State
enforced in their cxccution-that they were
offenders Of Society and forfeited
their lives for the greatest crime
that Society knows. That whatever the
wrongs they conceived existent and calling
for remedy, Society was and is sternIy and
opposed to their methods for
redressing them and will not tolerate such
methods for a moment. In making them
out martyrs, therefore, Captain Black
places himself on record as condemning
and Law, and whatever his duties
were to these dead Anarchists as their
counsel, an their apologist he is false to the
oath he took on his admission to the bar
of which he ia a member. and deserves to
expelled from it. He. least of all at the
graves, should never have uttered the Ian
guage he did. and his false casuistry will be
wherever it is read by all good
and true citizens. Martyrs the dead Anar-
chists were not; they were felons who
richly deserved their fate.